Abstract
The Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS) measures important psychological constructs in an underemphasized section of the overlap between religion and well-being. Are religious/spiritual struggles distinct from religiousness, distress, and each other? To test the RSS’ internal discriminant validity, we replicated the original six-factor measurement model across five large samples (N = 5705) and tested the fit of a restricted bifactor model, which supported the mutual viability of multidimensional and unidimensional scoring systems for the RSS. Additionally, we explored a bifactor model with correlated group factors that exhibited optimal fit statistics. This model maintained the correlations among the original factors while extracting a general factor from the RSS. This general factor’s strong correlations with religious participation and belief salience suggested that this factor resembles religiousness itself. Estimating this general factor seemed to improve Demonic and Moral struggles’ independence from religiousness, but did not change any factor’s correlations with neuroticism, depression, anxiety, and stress. These distress factors correlated with most of the independent group factors corresponding to the original dimensions of the RSS, especially Ultimate Meaning and Divine struggles. These analyses demonstrate the discriminant validity of religious/spiritual struggles and the complexity of their relationships with religiousness and distress.
Highlights
Religious and spiritual (R/S) aspects of life present a variety of challenges
We excluded participants with insufficiently effortful responding (IER) patterns based on the number of identical responses each participant gave across all items of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS)
We found an absolute minimum of participants across all samples (n = 8 of N = 5863) chose the same option 23 out of 26 possible times
Summary
Religious and spiritual (R/S) aspects of life present a variety of challenges. Over the course of the lifespan many people experience R/S struggle, defined as tension and conflict about sacred matters within oneself, with others, and with the supernatural [1,2]. R/S struggles occur commonly, though not often severely [3,4]. A growing subdomain of psychological research on R/S examines the causes, consequences, and subjective experience of R/S struggle (for reviews, see [1,2,5,6,7,8]). Over 80 new publications related to R/S struggle have appeared since the turn of the millennium [8].
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